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Executive - Press Release

Posted on: July 12, 2018

New Castle County launches NCC Innovates by awarding grant to local start-up

Wilmington, DE – Today, at the 2018 Delaware Entrepreneurial Summit, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer presented local start-up D150 Fueling with the county’s Entrepreneurial Sponsorship Award. The award is the inaugural program of NCC Innovates, an initiative launched this year by New Castle County to drive economic development through support for promising entrepreneurs. NCC Innovates seeks to expand job creation through capitalizing on the next great idea. The Entrepreneurial Sponsorship Award comes with office space and amenities at the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce Emerging Enterprise Center, one-on-one business mentoring, business growth workshops and a one-year membership in the New Castle County Chamber of Commerce.

“NCC Innovates, a program established by New Castle County, creates jobs by investing in companies right here with ideas that deliver value,” Meyer said. “New Castle County is the place to start and grow your business and the Emerging Enterprise Center is one important piece of that ecosystem.”

Founded by University of Delaware undergraduate students Sam Bacharach, Amedeo Deluca and Bailey O’Brien in 2017, D150 Fueling provides on-site fueling and fuel marketing for commercial fleets. Coupled with cloud-based technology to track and control inventory, the company offers an on-demand fueling program tailored to clients’ needs that saves time, money and emissions.

“The Emerging Enterprise Center is thrilled to be partnering with New Castle County for this NCC Innovates award,” said Dora Cheatham, Director of the New Castle County Economic Development Council and Emerging Enterprise Center Program Manager. “We’re looking forward to helping D150 Fueling grow their business.”

Entrepreneurs establish half a million small businesses across the U.S. each year, and small businesses power job growth by creating nearly two-thirds of all new private sector jobs.

An open competition to select the Entrepreneurial Sponsorship Award winner was launched this spring through a partnership between New Castle County and the Emerging Enterprise Center. Local entrepreneurs submitted applications, which included information on the business, market and industry landscape, go-to-market strategy and financial estimates. Submissions were reviewed by a panel of five members of the Emerging Enterprise Center’s Advisory Board, which judged applications on several criteria, including business feasibility, understanding of market need and opportunity, clear articulation of value proposition, go-to-market strategy and realistic financial projections. Two finalists, announced last month, included D150 Fueling and SAS Nanotechnologies, LLC, a firm that has developed a proprietary, patent pending anticorrosive coating technology that not only prevents corrosion but also heals and protects metals from corrosion in the case of surface scratch/damage.